FitBit Charge HR // Product Review

It’s been a whole two and a half months since that solid black wrist band entered into my life. The wrap around fitness tracker to rival all fitness trackers – or, so I’ve heard anyway. What I am talking about today is the FitBit Charge HR. And as far as its fitness tracking abilities, it’s top notch. My only experience up to this point has been with the Nike FuelBand, which this – in my opinion – blows it out of the water.

The FitBit Charge HR keeps a running track of your daily steps, current heart rate, miles you’ve moved, calories burned, flights of stars climbed, and any alarms you have set, in addition to the time. The app that you can get to go with it makes the whole thing even better.

Here you can keep track of everything, and I mean everything! The features of the app that I love the most are the calorie tracking compatibility to My Fitness Pal, the sleep tracker, and the exercise tracker.

Having my FitBit synced to My Fitness Pal makes it so easy to see how many calories I’ve eaten in comparison to how many I have burned, and it shows what I have left. There’s this neat little chart too that lets you see how well you are doing each day with your preset caloric intake.

I have to admit, I don’t often come in at my calorie goal each day. I have mine set to be in a -250 calorie deficit, and by the time the day is over, I’m usually more in a deficit than that, which makes my calorie meter appear in the yellow, indicating an unsuccessful day. I still usually come under my goal which is good, but I like to see green levels on my charts. Then there are those days when I forget to enter in all my food, that one day on the 28th is definitely missing some meals. My presets here could use a little fine tuning.

Now for the sleep tracking. Initially, this was my favorite tracking part of the app. I wore my FitBit to bed for almost a whole month straight, as I’ve mentioned more than once over here. I have my sleep goal set to 7 1/2 hours, which I soon realized is very optimistic. It is only on Friday nights that I ever meet this goal. So I became mental about getting enough sleep. So much so that I tossed and turned in the night, which made it seem as if I had less sleep due to restlessness. On the nights I didn’t care, Friday night, I had the most blocks of uninterrupted sleep, and the least amount of restlessness. I have since started taking off my FitBit at night cause my constant lack of meeting my sleep goal was making me sad. Maybe I should change my sleep goals, and I’m still trying to get more sleep.

The exercise tracker is my favorite part of the device and it is the main reason that I wanted it. When I start any type of exercising, I depress the side button and the tracking begins. My workout duration, my calories burned, along with all the other specifics are recorded during this time period. And because my FitBit has the heart rate monitor, I know exactly what heart rate zone I was in and for how long during my workout period: peak, cardio, or fat burn. Fat burning sessions are my favorite, and those usually happen when I’m lifting weights – also my favorite. As a side note, a great reason to advocate weightlifting, and it’s just like I read, lifting burns more fat!

So with all that this little device can effectively keep track of, what could I possibly have negative to say? There is only one thing. When I first got it, it took me a week to get used to wearing it. It has a raised part underneath that is the heart rate monitor, and my wrist was very sore specifically where that was. The new indention on my arm almost felt like a bruise. I moved the band around a few days to sit a little lower, and even to be reversed to the underside of my wrist to try and help with the discomfort, but after a week, the soreness went away and it hasn’t been back since.

From what I’ve mentioned today and those few times before, it should be obvious that I really like my FitBit. I was sad when I found my first scratch on it and it took me a few days to get over it. I’m weird about wear on things that I own, though. I feel like if it shows sign of wear that means it will get worn out, right? But it’s just a sign that it is getting its use and that’s what it is for after all. I’m sold though and should I ever wear it out, it will be immediately replaced. I’ve gotten to where my wrist feels naked without it. And I can ignore the appearance of a plastic black band showing up in most all of my outfit photos these days.

*This FitBit was purchased with my own money – well my husband’s money – and this review is in no way sponsored by any means. I just really like my FitBit and wanted to tell everyone about it.

2 Replies to “FitBit Charge HR // Product Review”

This is a great review! I have been looking to get a fitbit, but can’t decide what model to get. I think this might be the smallest one, which would be good for my tiny wrist, but I’m not sure. I think you highlighted the pros and cons of this pretty well! Thank you!

I’m glad I could be of some help. The neat thing about getting a FitBit Charge HR now is that they have a new model and it comes with interchangeable bands. Still a great one for us with smaller wrists. 😉